As usual, we're in the process of devising brilliant last-minute costumes, and we got curious about what others around the globe have been searching for in preparation for Halloween.
We used Insights for Search to track the fastest-rising searches related to [costume] in the U.S. in 2009. The query at the top of the charts is [lady gaga costume] — no surprise, as the star wears quite a few costumes on a regular basis herself:
And many people seem to be planning a tribute to the late pop star Michael Jackson — searches for [michael jackson costume] started spiking in June of this year and have increased steadily since then:
Since Halloween is most popular in the U.S., we focused on queries there — but we did investigate searches in Canada and the U.K. for good measure. In Canada, people are overwhelmingly searching for costumes for two — variations on [couples costumes] dominate the top 10. Both in Canada and across the pond, searchers are looking for costumes based on Lewis Carroll's classic story Alice in Wonderland, with [mad hatter costume] in the top 10 in the U.K. and [alice in wonderland] in Canada.
Since [vampire costume] was one of the top 10 searches this year, we figured we'd check in with the various vampire TV shows and movies to see which is, um, making a killing in the costume race. The query [twilight costume] has the most search volume, with [true blood costume] not far behind. (Pointy teeth and body glitter — done!)
Thinking of dressing up your little ones? Popular queries in the U.S. related to [kids costume] include [ladybug], [minnie mouse] and [tinkerbell].
We also did some digging to see if people were taking inspiration from the movie Where the Wild Things Are and wearing a [max costume] this year. Based on the fastest-rising related terms [footie pajamas], [footed pajamas] and [max costume pattern], it seems like at least a few folks are choosing to make [max wolf suit] costumes at home:
As a dog-friendly company, we share the country-wide impulse to dress up our dogs for the holiday. Related searches for [taco dog costume], [dog shark costume] and [banana costume] (so cute!) all rank high.
At Google, we've been gearing up for tomorrow's real deal with festivities on our Mountain View campus, complete with Halloween crafts for visiting kids and a haunted house. Googlers are also pulling out all the stops for the costume contest:
We hope you have a happy Googleween!
